Jicarilla phonology
Consonants Jicarilla has 34 consonants: * What has developed into in Jicarilla corresponds to and in other Southern Athabaskan languages (e.g. Navajo and Chiricahua). Aspirated Stops The consonant / /, occurring in most other Athabaskan languages, only occurs alone in a few forms in Jicarilla and has mostly merged with / /. This consequently has made most of the aspirated stops in Jicarilla velar.Tuttle & Sandoval, 2002, p. 106 Fricatives and Approximants *w and ɰʷ}} are allophones of / /.Tuttle & Sandoval, 2002, p. 108 *ɰ}} is an allophone of / /. Nasals */m/ is never found word-finally and its most frequent position is in prefixes. */n/: See section on Syllabic /n/. Syllabic /n/ in Jicarilla The consonant /n/ can appear as a syllable and bear a high or low tone, but not a falling tone. High-toned /ń/ actually represents an underlying syllable, /nÍ/.Tuttle & Sandoval, 2002, p. 109 There are four possible contours for Vowel-/n/ and /n/-/n/ combinations: Low-high, High-low, High-high, and Low-low. The contours are illustrated in the following table: (Modified from Tuttle & Sandoval 2002, p. 109) /n/ may occur between /t/, / /, or /n/ and any stem-initial consonant, but when /n/ occurs alone before a stem-initial consonant, it forms a syllable of its own. When preceded by another prefix consonant, /n/ may or may not be judged to form a syllable by native speakers of Jicarilla. Vowels Jicarilla has 16 vowels: All vowels may be * oral or nasal * short or long The long high front oral vowel is phonetically higher than its nasal and short counterparts ( vs. ). The short back vowel is higher than its long and nasal counterparts ( vs. ). The short low vowel is higher than its long and nasal counterparts ( vs. ). Nasal vowels are indicated by underlining in the Jicarilla orthography. *There are oral and nasal versions of each vowel, but not all combinations of vowel quality, nasality, and tone are possible. Tone Jicarilla has three different tones: high, low, and falling. High tone is indicated with an acute accent. Low tone is unmarked. Falling tone is indicated by a sequence of acute-accented vowel and an unmarked vowel. * high tone: tsé (rock), dééh (tea) * low tone: ts’e 'sagebush', jee 'pitch' * falling tone: zháal (money), ha’dáonáa (how?) Syllables in Jicarilla Syllable Structure Syllables may be constructed as CV, CVC, or CV:C (C – Consonant; V – Vowel) depending on the morphology of a sequence. Onset may be any consonant, but coda consonants are limited to / /, /l/, / /, / /, /h/, /s/and /n/.Tuttle & Sandoval, 2002, p. 110 Syllable Duration A study of the durational effects of Jicarilla Apache show that morphology and prosody both affect and determine the durational realization of consonants and syllables.Tuttle, 2005, p. 342 It was found that in a recording of a passage read by native speakers stem, suffix, and particle syllables were found to be longer than prefix syllables, but there is not enough a distinction to see difference in duration. Syllables at the end of phrases were lengthened differently from syllables lengthened because of stress; this is in regards to a ratio of onset lengthening to rhyme lengthening. This study was only a beginning to analysis of Apachean language prosody. References